Advances In Mesopotamian Medicine From Hammurabi

To Hippocrates Attia download

https://ebookbell.com/product/advances-in-mesopotamian-medicine-
from-hammurabi-to-hippocrates-attia-2506064

Explore and download more ebooks at ebookbell.com

Here are some recommended products that we believe you will be
interested in. You can click the link to download.

Advances In Geology And Resources Exploration Ahmad Safuan Bin A

Rashid

https://ebookbell.com/product/advances-in-geology-and-resources-
exploration-ahmad-safuan-bin-a-rashid-44888202

Advances In Pattern Recognition And Artificial Intelligence Marleah

Blom

https://ebookbell.com/product/advances-in-pattern-recognition-and-
artificial-intelligence-marleah-blom-44899142

Advances In Communication Devices And Networking Proceedings Of Iccdn

2021 Sourav Dhar

https://ebookbell.com/product/advances-in-communication-devices-and-
networking-proceedings-of-iccdn-2021-sourav-dhar-45107982

Advances In Databases And Information Systems 26th European Conference

Adbis 2022 Turin Italy September 58 2022 Proceedings Silvia Chiusano

https://ebookbell.com/product/advances-in-databases-and-information-
systems-26th-european-conference-adbis-2022-turin-italy-
september-58-2022-proceedings-silvia-chiusano-45107984
Advances In Abdominal Wall Reconstruction Albert Losken Jeffrey Janis

https://ebookbell.com/product/advances-in-abdominal-wall-
reconstruction-albert-losken-jeffrey-janis-45210530

Advances In Oilwater Separation A Complete Guide For Physical Chemical

And Biochemical Processes Papita Das

https://ebookbell.com/product/advances-in-oilwater-separation-a-
complete-guide-for-physical-chemical-and-biochemical-processes-papita-
das-45285516

Advances In Smart Energy Systems Biplab Das Ripon Patgiri Valentina

Emilia Balas

https://ebookbell.com/product/advances-in-smart-energy-systems-biplab-
das-ripon-patgiri-valentina-emilia-balas-45334114

Advances In Biobased Fiber Moving Towards A Green Society Sanjay

Mavinkere Rangappa

https://ebookbell.com/product/advances-in-biobased-fiber-moving-
towards-a-green-society-sanjay-mavinkere-rangappa-45983380

Advances In Quantitative Economic Research 2021 International

Conference On Applied Economics Icqae Nicholas Tsounis

https://ebookbell.com/product/advances-in-quantitative-economic-
research-2021-international-conference-on-applied-economics-icqae-
nicholas-tsounis-46072866
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
TRUE MANLINESS.
 I.

T HE conscience of every man recognizes courage as the

foundation of true manliness, and manliness as the perfection of
human character, and if Christianity runs counter to conscience in
this matter, or indeed in any other, Christianity will go to the wall.
But does it? On the contrary, is not perfection of character—“Be
ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” perfection to be
reached by moral effort in the faithful following of our Lord’s life on
earth—the final aim which the Christian religion sets before
individual men, and constant contact and conflict with evil of all
kinds the necessary condition of that moral effort, and the means
adopted by our Master in the world in which we live, and for which
he died? In that strife, then, the first requisite is courage or
manfulness, gained through conflict with evil—for without such
conflict there can be no perfection of character, the end for which
Christ says we were sent into this world.
 II.
“Manliness and manfulness” are synonymous, but they embrace
more than we ordinarily mean by the word “courage;” for instance,
tenderness and thoughtfulness for others. They include that courage
which lies at the root of all manliness, but is, in fact, only its lowest
or rudest form. Indeed, we must admit that it is not exclusively a
human quality at all, but one which we share with other animals,
and which some of them—for instance the bulldog and weasel—
exhibit with a certainty and a thoroughness, which is very rare
amongst mankind.
In what, then, does courage, in this ordinary sense of the word,
consist? First, in persistency, or the determination to have one’s own
way, coupled with contempt for safety and ease, and readiness to
risk pain or death in getting one’s own way. This is, let us readily
admit, a valuable, even a noble quality, but an animal quality rather
than a human or manly one. Proficiency in athletic games is not
necessarily a test even of animal courage, but only of muscular
power and physical training. Even in those games which, to some
extent, do afford a test of the persistency, and contempt for
discomfort or pain, which constitute animal courage—such as
rowing, boxing, and wrestling—it is of necessity a most
unsatisfactory one. For instance, Nelson—as courageous an
Englishman as ever lived, who attacked a Polar bear with a
handspike when he was a boy of fourteen, and told his captain,
when he was scolded for it, that he did not know Mr. Fear—with his
slight frame and weak constitution, could never have won a boat-
race, and in a match would have been hopelessly astern of any one
of the crew of his own barge; and the highest courage which ever
animated a human body would not enable the owner of it, if he were
himself untrained, to stand for five minutes against a trained
wrestler or boxer.
 Athleticism is a good thing if kept in its place, but it has come to
be very much over-praised and over-valued amongst us.
True manliness is as likely to be found in a weak as in a strong
body. Other things being equal, we may perhaps admit (though I
should hesitate to do so) that a man with a highly-trained and
developed body will be more courageous than a weak man. But we
must take this caution with us, that a great athlete may be a brute
or a coward, while a truly manly man can be neither.
 III.
Let us take a few well-known instances of courageous deeds and
examine them; because, if we can find out any common quality in
them we shall have lighted on something which is of the essence of,
or inseparable from, that manliness which includes courage—that
manliness of which we are in search.
I will take two or three at hazard from a book in which they
abound, and which was a great favorite some years ago, as I hope it
is still, I mean Napier’s Peninsular War. At the end of the storming of
Badajos, after speaking of the officers, Napier goes on: “Who shall
describe the springing valor of that Portuguese grenadier who was
killed the foremost man at Santa Maria? or the martial fury of that
desperate rifleman, who, in his resolution to win, thrust himself
beneath the chained sword-blades, and then suffered the enemy to
dash his head in pieces with the end of their muskets.”
Again, at the Coa: “A north-of-Ireland man, named Stewart, but
jocularly called ‘the boy,’ because of his youth, nineteen, and of his
gigantic stature and strength, who had fought bravely and displayed
great intelligence beyond the river, was one of the last men who
came down to the bridge, but he would not pass. Turning round he
regarded the French with a grim look, and spoke aloud as follows,
‘So this is the end of our brag. This is our first battle, and we retreat!
The boy Stewart will not live to hear that said.’ Then striding forward
in his giant might he fell furiously on the nearest enemies with the
bayonet, refused the quarter they seemed desirous of granting, and
died fighting in the midst of them.”
“Still more touching, more noble, more heroic, was the death of
Sergeant Robert McQuade. During McLeod’s rush, this man, also
from the north of Ireland, saw two men level their muskets on rests
against a high gap in a bank, awaiting the uprise of an enemy. The
present Adjutant-general Brown, then a lad of sixteen, attempted to
ascend at the fatal spot. McQuade, himself only twenty-four years of
age, pulled him back, saying in a calm, decided tone, ‘You are too
young, sir, to be killed,’ and then offering his own person to the fire,
fell dead pierced with both balls.” And, speaking of the British soldier
generally, he says in his preface, “What they were their successors
now are. Witness the wreck of the Birkenhead, where four hundred
men, at the call of their heroic officers, Captains Wright and
Girardot, calmly and without a murmur accepted death in a horrible
form rather than endanger the women and children saved in the
boats. The records of the world furnish no parallel to this self-
devotion.”
Let us add to these two very recent examples: the poor colliers
who worked day and night at Pont-y-pridd with their lives in their
hands, to rescue their buried comrades; and the gambler in St. Louis
who went straight from the gaming-table into the fire, to the rescue
of women and children, and died of the hurts after his third return
from the flames.
Looking, then, at these several cases, we find in each that
resolution in the actors to have their way, contempt for ease, and
readiness to risk pain or death, which we noted as the special
characteristics of animal courage, which we share with the bulldog
and weasel.
So far all of them are alike. Can we get any further? Not much, if
we take the case of the rifleman who thrust his head under the
sword-blades and allowed his brains to be knocked out sooner than
draw it back, or that of “the boy Stewart.” These are intense
assertions of individual will and force—avowals of the rough hard-
handed man that he has that in him which enables him to defy pain
and danger and death—this and little or nothing more; and no doubt
a very valuable and admirable thing as it stands.
 But we feel, I think, at once, that there is something more in the
act of Sergeant McQuade, and of the miners in Pont-y-pridd—
something higher and more admirable. And it is not a mere question
of degree, of more or less, in the quality of animal courage. The
rifleman and “the boy Stewart” were each of them persistent to
death, and no man can be more. The acts were, then, equally
courageous, so far as persistency and scorn of danger and death are
concerned. We must look elsewhere for the difference, for that
which touches us more deeply in the case of Sergeant McQuade
than in that of “the boy Stewart,” and can only find it in the motive.
At least, it seems to me that the worth of the last lies mainly in the
sublimity of self-assertion, of the other in the sublimity of self-
sacrifice.
And this holds good again in the case of the Birkenhead. Captain
Wright gave the word for the men to fall in on deck by companies,
knowing that the sea below them was full of sharks, and that the
ship could not possibly float till the boats came back; and the men
fell in, knowing this also, and stood at attention without uttering a
word, till she heeled over and went down under them. And Napier,
with all his delight in physical force and prowess, and his intense
appreciation of the qualities which shine most brightly in the fiery
action of battle, gives the palm to these when he writes, “The
records of the world furnish no parallel to this self-devotion.” He was
no mean judge in such a case; and, if he is right, as I think he is, do
we not get another side-light on our inquiry, and find that the
highest temper of physical courage is not to be found, or perfected,
in action but in repose. All physical effort relieves the strain and
makes it easier to persist unto death under the stimulus and
excitement of the shock of battle, or of violent exertion of any kind,
than when the effort has to be made with grounded arms. In other
words, may we not say that in the face of danger self-restraint is
after all the highest form of self-assertion, and a characteristic of
manliness as distinguished from courage.
 IV.
The courage which is tested in times of terror, on the battle-field,
in the sinking ship, the poisoned mine, the blazing house, presents
but one small side of a great subject. Such testing times come to
few, and to these not often in their lives. But on the other hand, the
daily life of every one of us teems with occasions which will try the
temper of our courage as searchingly, though not as terribly, as
battle-field or fire or wreck. For we are born into a state of war; with
falsehood and disease, and wrong and misery in a thousand forms
lying all around us, and the voice within calling on us to take our
stand as men in the eternal battle against these.
And in this life-long fight, to be waged by every one of us single-
handed against a host of foes, the last requisite for a good fight, the
last proof and test of our courage and manfulness, must be loyalty
to truth—the most rare and difficult of all human qualities. For such
loyalty, as it grows in perfection, asks ever more and more of us,
and sets before us a standard of manliness always rising higher and
higher.
And this is the great lesson which we shall learn from Christ’s life,
the more earnestly and faithfully we study it. “For this end was I
born, and for this cause came I into the world, to bear witness to
the truth.” To bear this witness against avowed and open enemies is
comparatively easy; but, to bear it against those we love; against
those whose judgment and opinions we respect, in defense or
furtherance of that which approves itself as true to our own inmost
conscience, this is the last and abiding test of courage and of
manliness.
 V.
How natural, nay, how inevitable it is, that we should fall into the
habit of appreciating and judging things mainly by the standards in
common use amongst those we respect and love. But these very
standards are apt to break down with us when we are brought face
to face with some question which takes us ever so little out of
ourselves and our usual moods. At such times we are driven to
admit in our hearts that we, and those we respect and love, have
been looking at and judging things, not truthfully, and therefore not
courageously and manfully, but conventionally. And then comes one
of the most searching of all trials of courage and manliness, when a
man or woman is called to stand by what approves itself to their
consciences as true, and to protest for it through evil report and
good report, against all discouragement and opposition from those
they love or respect. The sense of antagonism instead of rest, of
distrust and alienation instead of approval and sympathy, which such
times bring, is a test which tries the very heart and reins, and it is
one which meets us at all ages, and in all conditions of life.
Emerson’s hero is the man who, “taking both reputation and life in
his hand, will with perfect urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob, by
the resolute truth of his speech and rectitude of his behavior.”
 VI.
After all, what would life be without fighting, I should like to
know? From the cradle to the grave, fighting, rightly understood, is
the business, the real, highest, honestest business of every son of
man. Every one who is worth his salt has his enemies, who must be
beaten, be they evil thoughts and habits in himself, or spiritual
wickednesses in high places, or Russians, or border-ruffians.
It is no good for Quakers, or any other body of men to uplift their
voices against fighting. Human nature is too strong for them, and
they don’t follow their own precepts. Every soul of them is doing his
own piece of fighting, somehow and somewhere. The world might
be a better world without fighting, for anything I know, but it
wouldn’t be our world; and therefore I am dead against crying
peace, when there is no peace, and isn’t meant to be. I am as sorry
as any man to see folks fighting the wrong people and the wrong
things, but I’d a deal sooner see them doing that, than that they
should have no fight in them.
 VII.
You can’t alter society, or hinder people in general from being
helpless and vulgar—from letting themselves fall into slavery to the
things about them if they are rich, or from aping the habits and vices
of the rich if they are poor. But you may live simple, manly lives
yourselves, speaking your own thought, paying your own way, and
doing your own work, whatever that may be. You will remain
gentlemen so long as you follow these rules, if you have to sweep a
crossing for your livelihood. You will not remain gentlemen in
anything but the name, if you depart from them, though you may be
set to govern a kingdom.
 VIII.
In testing manliness as distinguished from courage, we shall have
to reckon sooner or later with the idea of duty. Nelson’s column
stands in the most conspicuous site in all London, and stands there
with all men’s approval, not because of his daring courage. Lord
Peterborough, in a former generation, Lord Dundonald in the one
which succeeded, were at least as eminent for reckless and
successful daring. But it is because the idea of devotion to duty is
inseparably connected with Nelson’s name in the minds of
Englishmen, that he has been lifted high above all his compeers in
England’s capital.
 IX.
In the throes of one of the terrible revolutions of the worst days
of imperial Rome—when probably the cruelest mob and most
licentious soldiery of all time were raging round the palace of the
Cæsars, and the chances of an hour would decide whether Galba or
Otho should rule the world, the alternative being a violent death—an
officer of the guard, one Julius Atticus, rushed into Galba’s presence
with a bloody sword, boasting that he had slain his rival, Otho. “My
comrade, by whose order?” was his only greeting from the old Pagan
chief. And the story has come down through eighteen centuries, in
the terse, strong sentences of the great historian, Tacitus.
Comrade, who ordered thee? whose will art thou doing? It is the
question which has to be asked of every fighting man, in whatever
part of the great battlefield he comes to the front, and determines
the manliness of soldier, statesman, parson, of every strong man,
and suffering woman.
“Three roots bear up Dominion; knowledge, will,
These two are strong; but stronger still the third,
Obedience: ’tis the great tap-root, which still
Knit round the rock of Duty, is not stirred,
Though storm and tempest spend their utmost skill.”
I think that the more thoroughly we sift and search out this
question the more surely we shall come to this as the conclusion of
the whole matter. Tenacity of will, or wilfulness, lies at the root of all
courage, but courage can only rise into true manliness when the will
is surrendered; and the more absolute the surrender of the will the
more perfect will be the temper of our courage and the strength of
our manliness.
“Strong Son of God, immortal Love,”
the laureate has pleaded, in the moment of his highest inspiration.
“Our wills are ours to make them thine.”
And that strong Son of God to whom this cry has gone up in our
day, and in all days, has left us the secret of his strength in the
words, “I am come to do the will of my Father and your Father.”
 X.
Haste and distrust are the sure signs of weakness, if not of
cowardice. Just in so far as they prevail in any life, even in the most
heroic, the man fails, and his work will have to be done over again.
In Christ’s life there is not the slightest trace of such weakness or
cowardice. From all that we are told, and from all that we can infer,
he made no haste, and gave way to no doubt, waiting for God’s
mind, and patiently preparing himself for whatever his work might
be. And so his work from the first was perfect, and through his
whole public life he never faltered or wavered, never had to
withdraw or modify a word once spoken. And thus he stands, and
will stand to the end of time, the true model of the courage and
manliness of boyhood and youth and early manhood.
 XI.
The man whose yea is yea and his nay nay, is, we all confess, the
most courageous, whether or no he may be the most successful in
daily life. And he who gave the precept has left us the most perfect
example of how to live up to it.
 XII.
It is his action when the danger comes, not when he is in solitary
preparation for it, which marks the man of courage.
 XIII.
In all the world’s annals there is nothing which approaches, in the
sublimity of its courage, that last conversation between our Saviour
and the Roman procurator, before Pilate led him forth for the last
time and pleaded scornfully with his nation for the life of their king.
There must be no flaw or spot on Christ’s courage, any more than
on his wisdom and tenderness and sympathy. And the more
unflinchingly we apply the test the more clear and sure will the
response come back to us.
 XIV.
Quit yourself like men; speak up, and strike out if necessary, for
whatsoever is true and manly, and lovely, and of good report; never
try to be popular, but only to do your duty and help others to do
theirs, and, wherever you are placed, you may leave the tone of
feeling higher than you found it, and so be doing good which no
living soul can measure to generations yet unborn.
 XV.
We listened to Dr. Arnold, as all boys in their better moods will
listen (aye, and men too for the matter of that,) to a man whom we
felt to be, with all his heart and soul and strength, striving against
whatever was mean and unmanly and unrighteous in our little world.
It was not the cold, clear voice of one giving advice and warning
from serene heights to those who were struggling and sinning
below, but the warm, living voice of one who was fighting for us by
our sides, and calling on us to help him and ourselves and one
another. And so, wearily and little by little, but surely and steadily on
the whole, was brought home to the young boy the meaning of his
life; that it was no fool’s or sluggard’s paradise into which he had
wandered by chance, but a battle-field ordained from of old, where
there are no spectators, but the youngest must take his side, and
the stakes are life and death. And he who roused this consciousness
in them, showed them at the same time, by every word he spoke in
the pulpit, and by his whole daily life, how that battle was to be
fought; and stood there before them their fellow-soldier and the
captain of their band. The true sort of a captain, too, for a boys’
army, one who had no misgivings and gave no uncertain word of
command, and, let who would yield or make truce, would fight the
fight out (so every boy felt) to the last gasp and the last drop of
blood. Other sides of his character might take hold of and influence
boys here and there, but it was this thoroughness and undaunted
courage which more than anything else won his way to the hearts of
the great mass of those on whom he left his mark, and made them
believe first in him, and then in his Master.
 XVI.
To stand by what our conscience witnesses for as truth, through
evil and good report, even against all opposition of those we love,
and of those whose judgment we look up to and should ordinarily
prefer to follow; to cut ourselves deliberately off from their love and
sympathy and respect, is surely one of the most severe trials to
which we can be put. A man has need to feel at such times that the
Spirit of the Lord is upon him in some measure, as it was upon
Christ when he rose in the synagogue of Nazareth and, selecting the
passage of Isaiah which speaks most directly of the Messiah,
claimed that title for himself, and told them that to-day this prophecy
was fulfilled in him.
The fierce, hard, Jewish spirit is at once roused to fury. They
would kill him then and there, and so settle his claims once for all.
He passes through them, and away from the quiet home where he
had been brought up—alone, it would seem, so far as man could
make him so, and homeless for the remainder of his life. Yet not
alone, for his Father is with him; nor homeless for he has the only
home of which man can be sure, the home of his own heart shared
with the Spirit of God.
 XVII.
We have been told recently, by more than one of those who
profess to have weighed and measured Christianity and found it
wanting, that religion must rest on reason, based on phenomena of
this visible, tangible world in which we are living.
Be it so. There is no need for a Christian to object. We can meet
this challenge as well as any other. We need never be careful about
choosing our own battlefield. Looking, then, at that world as we see
it, laboring heavily along in our own time—as we hear of it through
the records of the ages—I must repeat that there is no phenomenon
in it comparable for a moment to that of Christ’s life and work. The
more we canvass and sift and weigh and balance the materials, the
more clearly and grandly does his figure rise before us, as the true
Head of humanity, the perfect Ideal, not only of wisdom and
tenderness and love, but of courage also, because He was and is the
simple Truth of God—the expression, at last, in flesh and blood of
what He who created us means each one of our race to be.
 XVIII.
“My father,” said Hardy, “is an old commander in the royal navy.
He was a second cousin of Nelson’s Hardy, and that, I believe, was
what led him into the navy, for he had no interest whatever of his
own. It was a visit which Nelson’s Hardy, then a young lieutenant,
paid to his relative, my grandfather, which decided my father, he has
told me; but he always had a strong bent to sea, though he was a
boy of very studious habits.
“However, those were times when brave men who knew and
loved their profession couldn’t be overlooked, and my dear old father
fought his way up step by step—not very fast, certainly, but still fast
enough to keep him in heart about his chances in life.
“He was made commander towards the end of the war, and got a
ship, in which he sailed with a convoy of merchantmen from Bristol.
It was the last voyage he ever made in active service; but the
Admiralty was so well satisfied with his conduct in it that they kept
his ship in commission two years after peace was declared. And well
they might be, for in the Spanish main he fought an action which
lasted, on and off, for two days, with a French sloop-of-war, and a
privateer, either of which ought to have been a match for him. But
he had been with Vincent in the Arrow, and was not likely to think
much of such small odds as that. At any rate, he beat them off, and
not a prize could either of them make out of his convoy, though I
believe his ship was never fit for anything afterwards, and was
broken up as soon as she was out of commission. We have got her
compasses, and the old flag which flew at the peak through the
whole voyage, at home now. It was my father’s own flag, and his
fancy to have it always flying. More than half the men were killed or
badly hit—the dear old father among the rest. A ball took off part of
his knee-cap, and he had to fight the last six hours of the action
sitting in a chair on the quarter-deck; but he says it made the men
fight better than when he was among them, seeing him sitting there
sucking oranges.
“Well, he came home with a stiff leg. The Bristol merchants gave
him the freedom of the city in a gold box, and a splendidly-mounted
sword with an inscription on the blade, which hangs over the
mantel-piece at home. When I first left home, I asked him to give
me his old service-sword, which used to hang by the other, and he
gave it me at once, though I was only a lad of seventeen, as he
would give me his right eye, dear old father, which is the only one he
has now; the other he lost from a cutlass-wound in a boarding party.
There it hangs, and those are his epaulettes in the tin case. They
used to be under my pillow before I had a room of my own, and
many a cowardly down-hearted fit have they helped me to pull
through; and many a mean act have they helped to keep me from
doing. There they are always; and the sight of them brings home
the dear old man to me as nothing else does, hardly even his letters.
I must be a great scoundrel to go very wrong with such a father.
“Let’s see—where was I? Oh, yes; I remember. Well, my father
got his box and sword, and some very handsome letters from
several great men. We have them all in a book at home, and I know
them by heart. The ones he values most are from Collinwood, and
his old captain, Vincent, and from his cousin, Nelson’s Hardy, who
didn’t come off very well himself after the war. But my poor old
father never got another ship. For some time he went up every year
to London, and was always, he says, very kindly received by the
people in power, and often dined with one and another Lord of the
Admiralty who had been an old mess-mate. But he was longing for
employment, and it used to prey on him while he was in his prime to
feel year after year slipping away and he still without a ship. But why
should I abuse people and think it hard, when he doesn’t? ‘You see,
Jack,’ he said to me the last time I spoke to him about it, ‘after all, I
was a battered old hulk, lame and half-blind. So was Nelson, you’ll
say; but every man isn’t a Nelson, my boy. And though I might think
I could con or fight a ship as well as ever, I can’t say other folk who
didn’t know me were wrong for not agreeing with me. Would you,
now, Jack, appoint a lame and blind man to command your ship, if
you had one?’ But he left off applying for work soon after he was
fifty (I just remember the time), for he began to doubt then whether
he was quite so fit to command a small vessel as a younger man;
and though he had a much better chance after that of getting a ship
(for William IV. came to the throne, who knew all about him), he
never went near the Admiralty again. ‘God forbid,’ he said, ‘that his
Majesty should take me if there’s a better man to be had.’”
 XIX.
The object of wrestling and of all other athletic sports is to
strengthen men’s bodies, and to teach them to use their strength
readily, to keep their tempers, to endure fatigue and pain. These are
all noble ends. God gives us few more valuable gifts than strength of
body, and courage, and endurance—to laboring men they are
beyond all price. We ought to cultivate them in all right ways for
they are given us to protect the weak, to subdue the earth, to fight
for our homes and country if necessary.
 XX.
To you young men, I say, as Solomon said, rejoice in your youth;
rejoice in your strength of body, and elasticity of spirits and the
courage which follows from these; but remember, that for these gifts
you will be judged—not condemned, mind, but judged. You will have
to show before a judge who knoweth your inmost hearts, that you
have used these his great gifts well; that you have been pure and
manly, and true.
 XXI.
At last in my dream, a mist came over the Hill, and all the figures
got fainter and fainter, and seemed to be fading away. But as they
faded, I could see one great figure coming out clearer through the
mist, which I had never noticed before. It was like a grand old man,
with white hair and mighty limbs, who looked as old as the hill itself,
but yet as if he were as young now as he ever had been; and at his
feet were a pickaxe and spade, and at his side a scythe. But great
and solemn as it looked, I felt that the figure was not a man, and I
was angry with it. Why should it come in with its great pitiful eyes
and smile? Why were my brothers and sisters, the men and women,
to fade away before it?
“The labor that a man doeth under the sun, it is all vanity. Prince
and peasant, the wise man and the fool they all come to me at last
and I garner them away, and their place knows them no more!” So
the figure seemed to say to itself, and I felt melancholy as I watched
it sitting there at rest, playing with the fading figures.
At last it placed one of the little figures on its knee, half in
mockery, as it seemed to me, and half in sorrow. But then all
changed; and the great figure began to fade, and the small man
came out clearer and clearer. And he took no heed of his great
neighbor, but rested there where he was placed; and his face was
quiet, and full of life as he gazed steadily and earnestly through the
mist. And the other figures came flitting by again and chanted as
they passed, “The work of one true man is greater than all thy work.
Thou hast nought but a seeming power over it, or over him. Every
true man is greater than thee. Every true man shall conquer more
than thee; for he shall triumph over death, and hell, and thee, oh,
Time!”
 XXII.
The strain and burden of a great message of deliverance to men
has again and again found the weak places in the faith and courage
of the most devoted and heroic of those to whom it has been
entrusted. Moses pleads under its pressure that another may be sent
in his place, asking despairingly, “Why hast thou sent me?” Elijah
prays for death. Mohammed passes years of despondency and
hesitation under the sneers of those who scoff, “There goeth the son
of Abdallah, who hath his converse with God!” Such shrinkings and
doubtings enlist our sympathy, make us feel the tie of a common
humanity which binds us to such men. But no one, I suppose, will
maintain that perfect manliness would not suppress, at any rate, the
open expression of any such feelings. The man who has to lead a
great revolution should keep all misgivings to himself, and the
weight of them so kept must often prove the sorest part of his
burden.
 XXIII.
We have most of us, at one time or another of our lives, passed
through trying ordeals, the memory of which we can by no means
dwell on with pleasure. Times they were of blinding and driving
storm, and howling winds, out of which voices as of evil spirits spoke
close in our ears—tauntingly, temptingly, whispering to the
mischievous wild beast which lurks in the bottom of all our hearts—
now, “Rouse up! art thou a man and darest not do this thing;” now,
“Rise, kill and eat—it is thine, wilt thou not take it? Shall the flimsy
scruples of this teacher, or the sanctified cant of that, bar thy way
and balk thee of thine own? Thou hast strength to have them—to
brave all things in earth or heaven, or hell; put out thy strength, and
be a man!”
Then did not the wild beast within us shake itself, and feel its
power, sweeping away all the “Thou shalt nots,” which the Law
wrote up before us in letters of fire, with the “I will” of hardy,
godless, self-assertion? And all the while, which alone made the
storm really dreadful to us, was there not the still small voice, never
to be altogether silenced by the roarings of the tempest of passion,
by the evil voices, by our own violent attempts to stifle it;—the still
small voice appealing to the man, the true man, within us, which is
made in the image of God, calling on him to assert his dominion
over the wild beast—to obey, and conquer, and live. Aye! and though
we may have followed other voices, have we not, while following
them, confessed in our hearts that all true strength, and nobleness,
and manliness was to be found in the other path. Do I say that most
of us have had to tread this path and fight this battle? Surely I might
have said all of us; all, at least, who have passed the bright days of
their boyhood. The clear and keen intellect no less than the dull and
heavy; the weak, the cold, the nervous, no less than the strong and
passionate of body. The arms and the field have been divers—can
have been the same, I suppose, to no two men, but the battle must
have been the same to all. One here and there may have had a
foretaste of it as a boy; but it is the young man’s battle, and not the
boy’s, thank God for it! That most hateful and fearful of all relatives,
call it by what name we will—self, the natural man, the old Adam—
must have risen up before each of us in early manhood, if not
sooner, challenging the true man within us, to which the Spirit of
God is speaking, to a struggle for life or death.
Gird yourself, then, for the fight, my young brother, and take up
the pledge which was made for you when you were a helpless child.
This world, and all others, time and eternity, for you hang upon the
issue. This enemy must be met and vanquished—not finally, for no
man while on earth, I suppose, can say that he is slain; but, when
once known and recognized, met and vanquished he must be, by
God’s help, in this and that encounter, before you can be truly called
a man; before you can really enjoy any one even of this world’s
good things.
 XXIV.
In the course of my inquiries on the subject of muscular
Christians, their works and ways, a fact has forced itself on my
attention, which, for the sake of ingenious youth, ought not to be
passed over. I find then, that, side by side with these muscular
Christians, and apparently claiming some sort of connection with
them (the same concern, as the pirates of trade-marks say) have
risen up another set of persons, against whom I desire to caution
my readers. I must call the persons in question “musclemen,” as
distinguished from muscular Christians; the only point in common
between the two being that both hold it to be a good thing to have
strong and well-exercised bodies, ready to be put at the shortest
notice to any work of which bodies are capable, and to do it well.
Here all likeness ends; for the “muscleman” seems to have no belief
whatever as to the purposes for which his body has been given him,
except some hazy idea that it is to go up and down the world with
him, belaboring men and captivating women for his benefit or
pleasure, at once the servant and fomenter of those fierce and
brutal passions which he seems to think it a necessity, and rather a
fine thing than otherwise, to indulge and obey. Whereas, so far as I
know, the least of the muscular Christians has hold of the old
chivalrous and Christian belief, that a man’s body is given him to be
trained and brought into subjection, and then used for the protection
of the weak, the advancement of all righteous causes, and the
subduing of the earth which God has given to the children of men.
He does not hold that mere strength or activity are in themselves
worthy of any respect or worship, or that one man is a bit better
than another because he can knock him down, or carry a bigger
sack of potatoes than he. For mere power, whether of body or
intellect, he has (I hope and believe) no reverence whatever,
though, cæteris paribus, he would probably himself, as a matter of
taste prefer the man who can lift a hundred-weight round his head
with his little finger to the man who can construct a string of perfect
Sorites.
 XXV.
As a rule, the more thoroughly disciplined and fit a man may be
for any really great work, the more conscious will he be of his own
unfitness for it, the more distrustful of himself, the more anxious not
to thrust himself forward. It is only the zeal of the half-instructed
when the hour of a great deliverance has come at last—of those who
have had a glimpse of the glory of the goal, but have never known
or counted the perils of the path which leads to it—which is ready
with the prompt response, “Yes—we can drink of the cup, we can be
baptized with the baptism.”
Welcome to our website – the perfect destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. We believe that every book holds a new world,
offering opportunities for learning, discovery, and personal growth.
That’s why we are dedicated to bringing you a diverse collection of
books, ranging from classic literature and specialized publications to
self-development guides and children's books.

More than just a book-buying platform, we strive to be a bridge

connecting you with timeless cultural and intellectual values. With an
elegant, user-friendly interface and a smart search system, you can
quickly find the books that best suit your interests. Additionally,
our special promotions and home delivery services help you save time
and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Join us on a journey of knowledge exploration, passion nurturing, and

personal growth every day!

ebookbell.com